David Virtue's Irrational Hoplophobia - Part 4 in a Series

The following is a postscript to David Virtue's 2-17-18 commentary entitled "Gun Madness in America: Avoiding The Obvious", to which I responded in a post below.   Again, my responses here will be in italicized bold:

"Dear Brothers and Sisters,
www.virtueonline.org
February 23, 2018

In a God-n-Guns culture, evangelicals can usually be counted on to side with guns as part of the call to freedom and "rights" found in the Second Amendment. However, after the recent Florida school shooting which left 17 dead, evangelical leaders have called for action amid what they called a "moral emergency".

A petition calling for 'action' as well as prayer was signed by pastors, church leaders and others with influence who urged the faith community to acknowledge their biblical responsibility to protect life amid the nation's gun violence epidemic.

"As we mourn for our brothers and sisters who have died, we pray fervently for their friends and family who grieve. We also accept and declare that it is time to couple our thoughts and prayers with action," the petition states. "We call on our fellow Christian believers, church leaders, and pastors across the country to declare that we will decisively respond to this problem with both prayer and action."

The petition has already been signed by a number of leaders, including Rev Dr. Rob Schenck, president of The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute and the subject of the Emmy award-winning gun violence documentary The Armor of Light; Dr. Joel C Hunter, faith community organizer and retired senior pastor of Northland Church; Lynne Hybels, co-founder of Willow Creek Community Church; Dr. Preston Sprinkle, teacher, speaker and New York Times best-selling author; and Kathryn Freeman, director of public policy, Christian Life Commission, Texas Baptists (The Baptist General Convention).

Schenck said; "If the solution to this deadly disease in American society is more guns, then the United States -- with over 300 million weapons in general circulation -- would be the safest place on earth. We have a moral emergency in our country. It's time we wake up, face it, and fix it. Now. Fellow faith leaders, I hope you'll join myself, along with other church leaders and pastors and sign this petition letting the rest of our nation know that we're committed to responding to the gun violence plaguing our nation with both prayer AND action."

The deeper question is; "If not now, when? When will Christian leaders and all people of faith, the moral leaders of our society, recognize that our culture has so radically changed from the one that established the Second Amendment that its intent would now be better fulfilled with common sense qualifiers.

"In a society that is normalizing violence daily by constant news focus, video games and epidemic anger, why not at least keep weapons of mass murder out of the hands of the insane and the untrained? Such a movement will not start with politicians who are simply angling toward their own reelection. It is up to us."

Yes, Evangelicals *can* usually be counted on to side with gun rights, and that's why what Mr. Virtue references in this postscript is representative of a minority position.  Schenk, for example, has long been known to be a hoplophobe, which is precisely why the vast majority of American Evangelicals ignore him.

Evangelical anti-gunners such as Schenk and Virtue clutch their pearls at the thought of  "over 300 million weapons in general circulation", but what do they propose to do about it?  Circulate a petition?   Please. The purpose of petitions is to hopefully influence the Powers That Be to "do something" about gun-related violence.  Do Something.  Anything.  Anything at all.  That is the measure of the folly of gun-control activists.  Just please, Congress, pass any law you can, no matter how ill-reasoned, and they have managed to pass a few.

However, what have any of the laws they've managed to get on the books done so far to address the problem of gun-related violence?  Nothing, that's what.   There are still hundreds of millions of guns and "high-capacity" magazines in American hands, and counting.  There are probably a billion or so rounds of stockpiled ammunition, and counting.  Combine this with the unpleasant reality that we live in an increasingly nihilistic culture, and the conclusion follows that gun-related violence only promises to get worse. 

And this is why, as American sociologist Amitai Etzioni argued in a Communitarian Network journal article entitled "The Case for Domestic Disarmament" (apparently no longer accessible online), "vanilla-pale" measures such as background check requirements will never solve the problem of gun-related violence.  The only way to solve it, Etzioni argues, is to effectively disarm Americans through banning the sale and possession of firearms coupled with a national gun buyback program.  Etzioni reasserted that argument in a 2013 Huffington Post article.   This is more or less what happened in Australia in 1996 and 2003 when the Australian government banned most weapons and attempted to collect them through buyback programs in the wake of horrific gun-related crimes.  Mr. Virtue routinely touts the Australian "solution" as one that should be followed in the United States.

However, as David Kopel and I countered Etzioni in a Maryland Law Journal article, "Communitarians, Neorepublicans and Guns:  Assessing the Case for Firearms Prohibition", all this is just a laughable pipe dream, not to mention wholly unconstitutional.   It's simply not going to happen here in the United States, especially now that the United States Supreme Court has opined clearly on the matter.  Even if by some stretch of the imagination a future United States enacted such laws, it would be almost universally disobeyed, and worse, would likely touch off an American civil war.

A civil war with hundreds of millions of Americans fighting it against vastly outnumbered national law enforcement officers and military personnel (many if not most of whom would join the resistance, as they are even now).  (See Second Amendment Sanctuary Movement.)

Christian anti-gun activists such as Virtue and Schenk are therefore engaged in nothing more than a monumental exercise of wishful thinking.  Guns are here to stay here in America.  Hundreds of millions of them, including handguns and scary looking military-style semiautomatics.  The resolve of the American gun culture to keep it this way is expressed here.  "We will not disarm": "Memorandum on Arms and Freedom"

Part 5